Tough to believe England can't find spinners: Swann

Ever since Graeme Swann's sudden retirement during the 2013-14 Ashes series in Australia, England have found it difficult to find his successor. Monty Panesar was thought to be the perfect replacement for Swann, but the former has not grabbed his opportunities and was also in the headlines for bad off-field behaviour.

Durham leg-spinner Scott Borthwick was also tested by the management but they did not find enough in him for a long term investment.

Arguably, England's domestic cricket structure is the best in the world as it has a number of counties to pick players from. Despite this, the England management has found it tough to find a quality replacement. When Moeen Ali, a solid left-handed batsman, showed that he could bowl decent off-spin, the England management roped him into the squad and immediately handed him the Test cap to play against Sri Lanka.

However, when Ali, on a flat Trent Bridge track, failed to impress in the first Test against India, critics called for England to seriously look into a specialist spinner, on whom they can rely upon.

Speaking to BBC on this topic, Swann himself said: "I can't believe out of 18 counties, one or two of them haven't gone for the spinning options. They all do the same: medium pace. Why doesn't someone leave their wickets dry and play two or three spinners? One year we did that at Northants and walked the Second Division because we won every home game by an innings."

The right-arm off-spinner stressed that the England board should encourage spinners by preparing spin-friendly pitches across the country.

"If you had a couple of centres around the country producing turning pitches and committing to developing spinners you would start getting people going there. You would get 16-year-olds thinking that going to one of those counties and bowling spin could be a good career choice," he said.

"At the moment, if I went to watch a county game, there would be no incentive to bowl spin, because most of them stand at second slip picking their nose for 95 overs," he added.

When asked what is takes to become a quality spinner, Swann explained: "It is such a lonely position that you have got to grow into it, understand it, to deal with pressure. Day one of a Test match, I would wake up without a care in the world, knowing all I had to do was bowl 20 overs for 60 runs. On day four, I would wake up feeling electrified knowing they were expecting me to take six wickets to win the game,"

"Young spinners are not used to that; they are not ready for that pressure of having Nasser Hussain sticking a microphone under their nose first thing in the morning and saying, 'It's up to you. Are you going to do it?'," he added.

During his days, Swann was then-England captain, Andrew Strauss' go-to man if the seamers weren't doing the job. Be it stemming the run flow or getting a breakthrough, Swann, who had a pretty simple, yet effective action, used to deliver more often than not.

Swann spoke about how important it is for a spinner to force the captain to invest in you: "You have to win your captain over. I was lucky that I won Andrew Strauss over early on by getting wickets in my first game. I am very stroppy when I bowl so I just told them to give me the field I wanted or they could let someone else bowl."

England, who were without a front-line spinner in the first Test, strengthened their squad for the second Test by recalling Simon Kerrigan. The Lancashire left-arm spinner had a forgettable debut at The Oval against Australia in the 2013 Ashes series as he bowled just eight overs in the Test match conceding over 6 runs per over.

Asked about his opinion on England's move, Swann replied: "I think England coach Peter Moores is keen to get Kerrigan back into the team, but I'd love to see him get a lot more wickets under his belt for his own confidence and state of mind," said Swann, politely suggesting that he would have chosen Borthwick ahead of Kerrigan.

"Scott Borthwick is a very, very talented young bowler - he just needs to bowl a lot more overs. He needs to get away from Durham," said Swann, when asked to pick a spinner, whom he thought could do well for England.